Making 'Small Improvements' to Social HR at ImageX

One of the "core values":http://imagexmedia.com/blog/2010/3/pursuit-awesome-our-company-values we have at ImageX is Honest Communication. This value is weaved through all levels of our organization; from our client-facing development team to our people leaders. With this in mind we were in the market for a tool to facilitate performance reviews when we came across "Small Improvements":http://small-improvements.com. This super tool’s mission is to generate regular bouts of constructive feedback and praising the small wins over the course of the month, year, and career. The purpose is just that: small improvements. It encourages the celebration of the every day acts that happen in the organization that are the evidence of something bigger happening. The great thing about Small Improvements is that it facilitates Social HR. It creates an environment in which our team can share, relish in, and cheer on successes in a social, Facebook kind of way. Team members can provide praise, feedback, or post an idea to the team newsfeed allowing others to read it, like it, and add to it. You can also provide private, 1:1 feedback to a team mate that is completely off-the-grid, only HR can see it style feedback. These options allow us to foster a culture in which feedback and honest communication is accessible, encouraged, and a cultural norm. You can also facilitate company wide performance reviews. It's a completely customizable function where you can coordinate objective setting, self-assessments, as well as 360 reviews. For us it's very important that the performance review experience is a positive one. Our number one rule when it comes to performance reviews is: no surprises. This is why the approach of Small Improvements fits so well with us. We want to communicate regularly and honestly with our people so that come performance review time there is reduced anxiety and it's shifted to a positive, learning experience. Another one of our company values is a Passion to Learn. With utilizing a tool like Small Improvements we can facilitate and embrace the toughest type of learning - learning about ourselves. The 360 review function gives our team mates a chance to step into each others shoes and objectively ask themselves what they would do better in that position, how would they improve? With the decision to use Small Improvements made, our next objective was adoption. A successful adoption will make or break our new venture. Using our regular Friday afternoon Lunch and Learn as a venue, I led the team through a 45 minute training session on the basic what, how, when, and why's of Small Improvements; the latter being the most influential. We also made a commitment to our team - in a transparent, honest way about what they can expect from their leadership team when it comes to the tool and the overall performance review process. One month into using the tool, I'm happy to report that the team is using it more and more each day. We're seeing peer to peer recognition, feedback, and ideas sharing. We're also at the tail end of our first 360 review process with the results looking to influence positive changes in our organization. Stay tuned for future posts as we continue to adopt new tools to make our values and vision alive.